Why should your title and H1 tag be different?

[MarieHaynes]

Is it dangerous to have your H1 tag and your title the exact same thing?  My thought was that it's not be the best use of space, but that it couldn't cause harm.

What do you think?

[vernonmack]

What I'm not seeing addressed specifically in the thread is can the KW term within your H1 & Title differ? I get that if the whole title and whole header differ slightly like:

Title: Best Plumber Local |100% Satisfaction Guaranteed!

H1: Best Plumber Local offers 100% Satisfaction Guarantees!

*Please note - not my best copywriting effort at play here

Then it's not worth sweating over, so long as the searcher does't experience a disconnect between he SERP result and and the landing page messaging.

My concern is over the need to target "ugly" KWs - terms that don't fit well in to the UX equation, but have exponentially more search volume than they "prettier" version.  Let's say "plumber local" has 1,000 monthly searches vs "local plumber" that has 300 monthly searches. But "local plumber" is much better for copy/user readability.  Can you use:

Title for the SERP: Best Plumber Local |100% Satisfaction Guaranteed!

H1 for UX: Best Local Plumber offers 100% Satisfaction Guarantees!

...and still be nicely optimized for "plumber local" assuming you can find a smooth way to work it into copy (easier than doing it in an H1), alt tag, and site has otherwise good authority/reputation. Also, ugly KW (plumber local) would be used in the url).

Thanks is advance!

[PremierBusinessCare]

It's your cms causing the problem. duplicate page titles are very different to duplicate H1's which would be regarded as duplicate content.

I suggest you go into your cms and get rid of the dupe titles, remove cache pages, and google fetch them all, in GWT's.

[Chedr]

Hi there,  So I'm trying out SEOMOZ for the 1st time + ran a report across my site - it's pulled out a heap of duplicate page titles errors! I've been trying to get my head around this as I have like 30 posts in my blog and the rest of the site is relatively tiny (home, contact us, services, blog) - the duplicate content factor leads me to think that it's due to the Title name being the same as the H1s? - am I going crazy here? I was of the impression that title + h1 the same was the way to go - I feel a bit shattered at the mo trying to work this out. Can anyone kindly shed some light on this? Each of my blog posts have unique names - I don't get it? Thx so much for any notes that you can provide. I'd grtly appreciate some tips on this.

[jcontraros]

In my experience: there is no significant difference as far as the search engines are concerned. I agree with Rand in that for many users, the first thing they will expect to see is the same title they clicked on via the search engine.

My rule of thumb is always do what makes sense to users. Even if a different H1 tag caused some significant affect such as moving you up on the SERP (unlikely), if the user doesn't get what they expect they will click back. If anyone experiments with this, pay close attention not only to ranking but also to bounce rates. I'd rather be the second result with a 10% bounce rate than the first result with a 90% bounce rate.

[starplus]

I will do that .

Many Thanks

[KeriMorgret]

Hi Sergio,

This is an old thread, and you might want to consider starting a new thread with your specific question. The Beginner's Guide to SEO should also be helpful to you at http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo.

[starplus]

My site dont have H1 AND H2 www.starplusservices.com we need to update our site now do you think that Iwill need to optmize this?

Regards

Sergio

[dignan99]

If I am understanding Rand and Todd's opinions correctly regarding this subject:

Rand believes it doesn't matter.

Todd believes it does matter and can be beneficial.

To me that would say to err on the side of caution and choose Todd.  Not because he is correct, but because there is no harm in doing so either way according to Rand.

[SteveOllington]

Haha, yeah Matt should be a politician

[MarieHaynes]

Thanks Rand!  This really makes sense to me.

I've always considered H1 tags a non-entity when it comes to SEO.  I write my H1 tags to add a headline to help the user understand what the page is about.  But my title is really written primarily for search engines (with the idea that it needs to make sense for the reader as well.)

[randfish]

I don't know... There's a surprising number of people who've reported hearing Matt say things. Yet, somehow, whenever there's video of him, he magically says next to nothing. I'd be skeptical at best.

[SteveOllington]

Well, not meaning to sound like too much of a suck up... but I tend to be of the opinion that what Rand says is always right lol. I therefore must graciously accept defeat on the subject... there's no way I'm going up against you on stuff haha.

I still want to know though... I mean, I totally see what you mean that there's no point in worrying about it as the time is spent better elsewhere, but anything with opinions and evidence from both sides makes me want a definitive tested answer.

[randfish]

Just want to point out that personally, I disagree with that assessment and haven't seen anything data-wise to suggest it's an issue. It's hard to believe that Google/Bing would want to penalize so many millions of sites that do this by default (news sites, Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, etc. all have it in default settings either in base or plugins).

That said, Todd usually has good reasons for his recommendations, so would be interesting to probe more deeply.

[SteveOllington]

My general view though is that there's far better uses of most SEOs time than worrying about H1s

Yeah but it's fun trying to find out though

What about the Matt Cutts thing, do you think there could be any truth to that?

[randfish]

Wow - surprisingly good topic for such a relatively basic part of SEO!

So... I think Todd Malicoat and I still disagree. He likes to have a different title + H1 and claims they're good for rankings and keyword diversity. I largely disagree based on user experience and the relative unimportance of H1s (you can see from our correlation analyses and our ranking models work that H1s appear to have virtually no advantage over just having keywords at the top of a page in large text).

My view is that when someone clicks on a search result listing, they expect to find the thing they've just clicked on. The title is what shows in the SERPs, but if the H1 is substantively different, they're getting what feels like a somewhat different page. That dis-congruous experience can result in high bounce rates and in searcher dis-satisfaction.

In addition, I'm not convinced there's a measurable benefit from differentiated titles vs. H1s. No search engine rep has given guidance on this (in fact, they've stayed conspicuously quiet over the years about whether the H1 does anything at all).

So - there you have it - a small controversy on a small point of on-page optimization. I think the best practice is to do what feels right (neither Todd nor I think the other's opinion will have a negative impact) and, if you're uncertain, test it out on different sets of pages.

My general view though is that there's far better uses of most SEOs time than worrying about H1s

[SteveOllington]

Righty... in the interests of defending my original position

I've looked around a bit, and granted not all of these are credible sources but again Todd Malicoat is as I'm sure you'll agree. Jill Whalen in one of the below links says she'd prefer them not to match and the others are people of whom I don't know their knowledge or experience, but (and admittedly this is hearsay) one guy says he heard Matt Cutts at PubCon say they should be at least a little different.

One guy (again I don't know how credible he is as a source) said he tested it and found it can be found as more spammy if they're the same.

Anyway, it appears this debate has happened before in other places and there are some good points made, so here's the links

http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=41271

http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4078221.htm

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=0a4f386adacc7769&hl=en

Over all though, I think we need to know if the test Rand and Todd spoke of ever happened, and if so what the results were.

[SteveOllington]

lol it did come from a pretty good source (not me, I mean Todd)... but yeah when I dug further I found that Todd and Rand were debating it (as per the screen shots on the other comment here), so I guess you're right.

I would have thought though that usually when someone like Todd says something like that, there's got to be a pretty good reason based on his experience.

[JerDoggMckoy]

Yeah, I read that, didn't agree with it though. That's the danger of depending too much on forum members for answers to your SEO questions. It's like going to Web Pro World or something. You'll get completely opposite answers depending on the day.

[JerDoggMckoy]

I think that duplicating the title tag and the H1 tag seek to maintain continuity and continued thought process in the mind of the consumer. I think subtle differences are ok and they make sense, but I do not think there is any danger in doing so whatsoever.

[CodyWheeler]

If we look at a site like a human would, which is what search engines are evolving to do, then always matching exactly your Title and H1 tags is going to be pretty silly in my opinion.

Good practice is to use a few targeted keywords in the Title tag that describe your page well and the content within up to 70 characters. Of course not all pages will use the full 70 characters. That might cause stuffing penalties.

For H1 you might match some of what you list in the Title, but not exactly. You're going to have commas, pipe characters, other kinds of descriptions, brands, etc. Matching all of this would be crazy and would make a site appear very spammy.

Since the search engines are striving to be more and more human every day a good long term strategy is to build sites for humans first, and search engines a close second.

[SteveOllington]

Looked at it a bit further and found another video from earlier on with Rand and Todd discussing it...

Rand: Matching Title and H1 is fine

Todd: Matching Title and H1 is bad

Conclusion: Rand says "We should test it"

But no results on the video I'm afraid lol, so still none the wiser but that does make things interesting. I wonder if the test was ever carried out and if so, what were the results?

Rand??

BTW I hope you and Todd don't mind me adding these screenshots.

h1-title2.jpg

[EGOL]

The average Joe Schmoe who has a website is going to type the title of his page into both the <title>and <h1>.</p> <p>I can't imagine any search engine deducting points for it.... and with 199 other factors in the rankings if this WAS in there the deduction for it would be really really low.</p> <p>Still... I think that a person can safely bet a month's pay that matching title and H1 will not make him rank #2 when everything else ranks him #1.</p> <p>Also, I can't imagine search engines placing this "invisible tripwire for SEOs" in their evaluation that is going to be automatically triggered by some of the most commonly used content management systems.</p></title>

[SteveOllington]

I would have to disagree with that. To me, if there were no SEO in existence then the title would be a title and the H1 would be an H1, which as it is named is a heading. Title and heading are two different words because they mean different things (albeit only slightly).

Also, to have them both unique and that being SEO gamemanship doesn't make any sense to me, I mean, how many keywords is this page being optimized for that would allow that to work positively for SEO??

[Falconberg]

I can't imagine that this would cause problems. When I have a question of this nature, I try to take off my search engine goggles and think about user experience. From this view, differing title and H1 tags would be a better indicator of SEO gamesmanship. From the user's perspective, what they see in SERPs sets up an expectation for what is shown on the page. If I click on a link for "Top 10 Digital Camera Reviews," I expect to see an article of the same title on the page.  For search engines to penalize this would be nonsensical.

Of course, if both your title and H1 tags say "camera, cameras, camera reviews, review camera, how to review camera," then you have a problem.  But, as mentioned above, that's not intrinsic to the matching H1 and title tags.

[SteveOllington]

I'm guessing it must be pretty close to fact if it's those guys over at MM. They must get their info from somewhere... anyway, apparently it's because the pages may appear over-optimized if the title and h1's match, which makes sense I think. The recommendation given is that in the CMS (Joomla for example) there is often an option not to have it display the title in H1 too, it's recommended to use that option and add your own H1 unique to the title tag.

[SteveOllington]

Found it

It's actually under a section about common CMS problems.

h1-title.jpg

[firstconversion]

It is not that having H1 and Title the same is damaging, it is the overall quality and trust metrics of many websites that employ this methodology that is the cause of problems: simply, correlation vs causation

In EGOLs case its fine as the rest of the site is fine, in other cases it may seem bad, but thats just because the rest of the site is bad

[MarieHaynes]

That would be great Steve.  Let us know what was suggested in the video.  This is one of the difficulties in learning SEO is that it's often hard to know if something is known as fact or is just an assumption.

[SteveOllington]

I'll check the vid I got that from when I get home and post the reason, can't remember why it is now I just know it was described as a big "Don't Do It"

[MarieHaynes]

Thanks guys.  In another thread this morning it was suggested that it could be damaging to your site to have both the H1 and the title tag the same.

[PremierBusinessCare]

I'd agree.  I've never known this or heard of this to be "dangerous".  In fact, in terms of on-page optimisation, your target keywords should be included in both the title and the H1 tags.

I'd say it's dangerous if you have multiple pages with the same title and H1 tags.  Then the pages could be seen as duplicates and might not be indexed.

[EGOL]

Dangerous?

I doubt it.

I have a site full of this and it is hard to beat in my SERPs.

Saves time in my opinion.  Smart, if the title and the H1 make sense.

Lots of content management systems produce this automatically - and match the URL to boot!

Added: (I do have lots of pages where the title tag and the H1 differ.  For those pages the title tag was written to elicit clicks and the H1 was simply the title of the article.)